


Shrike

by swimthewholeriogrande



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amy Santiago is Freaking Out, Character Turned Into a Ghost, F/M, Gen, Ghosts, Haunting, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Jake Peralta is Chill but Also Dead, Mourning, Murder, Paranormal, Slow Burn, Unsolved Murder, Violence, Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-07-25 18:23:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20030293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swimthewholeriogrande/pseuds/swimthewholeriogrande
Summary: When Amy Santiago is assigned to the 99 to replace a detective murdered only weeks before, she's been expecting a certain level of oddity to accompany the job - after all, she's stepping into a dead man's shoes.What she didn't expect was that the dead man would appear to her frequently, desperate for a connection to the world of the living. Jake needs help, and Amy needs something to believe in - so it's only a matter of time before things start to change for them both.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'M SO EXCITED TO WRITE THIS! Please let me know in the comments if you'd be interested in it, thanks for reading!

The first sign that Amy isn't going to have the best first day at her new job is the fact that she misses the train. 

She gets to the platform just as the doors close and it splutters to life, and no amount of banging on the glass will open them; it just makes her look like an idiot tourist who doesn't know how the subway works. She has to run from there to the bus stop instead, and the bus feels like over a hundred degrees, so by the time she finally, finally arrives at the door of the new precinct she's sweaty and gross and not ready to walk into a room full of new people.

_They're going to be hard enough to impress as it is,_ she thinks grimly as she slams the button for the elevator. She'd been so delighted to be offered a transfer to the 99 until she learned that it was because the detective she was replacing had been _murdered_. 

But she has a job to do, and even though that poor man has only been dead a few weeks, Amy knows that someone has to replace him. She wasn't quite sure how to do that tactfully - _they surely wouldn't put her at his desk, right? That would be a step too far_ \- but she'll figure it out. She's a damn good detective, and she'll charm them all eventually. 

As soon as the elevator door opens, and Amy takes a deep breath to prepare stepping in to her new workplace, she's assaulted by the smell of smoke. There's a microwave smoldering in the corner and a mournful fire alarm blaring; no one seems particularly bothered by it until suddenly a mountain of a man - the Sargent, she thinks - comes around a corner and swears loudly, reaching for the fire extinguisher. 

"Boyle! What did I say about reheating stew in the kitchen?"

A far smaller man swivels around in his chair, looking reproachful. "It's supposed to make that smell! It sparks! It's from New Guinea!"

Amy watches the ensuing lighthearted argument for a few more moments, unable to tear her eyes away. Then she takes a few more hesitant steps into the precint and someone notices her at last.

"Detective Santiago?" she hears, and when Amy looks up gratefully she finally sees Captain Holt - _the_ Captain Holt - standing in the middle of the bullpen. The other detectives quiet down, and about twenty gazes fall on her, and she suddenly feels like she's in a fishbowl.

"Yes, Captain." she replies; her voice is so loud in the silence. A woman in a leather jacket is blatantly glaring and Amy fights the urge to cry at the pressure she now feels will be present for probably her whole career here. What was she thinking? The detective she's replacing was these people's best friend. How could they ever welcome her, the replacement, a poor second best? How could she ever measure up?

Holt looks unaffected by the tense atmosphere that Amy is really hoping she's imagining. "Come to my office." 

His voice is clipped and calm and makes her a little more at ease; his gravity is contagious, so she walks towards him as fast as she can without it being weird, eager to get away from the burning eyes around her. As she walks, she notices the small man is the only one not looking at her; he is staring wistfully at an empty desk which frighteningly clean and bare. Amy feels a shiver go down her spine. A nameplate has been recently removed from the side of the table.

As soon as the door closes behind her, Holt invites her to take a seat. "Welcome to the 99th Precinct," he says benignly. "I am sure the squad will welcome you with open arms when they have such an opportunity."

Amy swallows hard. "I'm very - very grateful for the job, Captain, but I..." She doesn't know how to not sound ungrateful. "I'm concerned about how they'll feel since I'm...the replacement for..."

Holt's left eyebrow twitches. "Detective Peralta."

"Yes. I mean, yes, Captain."

Holt leans back in his chair pensively. His face is sedate, but not unkind. "It will take time," he replies slowly, "but they are good people. They bear no ill will towards you. In fact, they were awaiting your arrival with some relief." His eyebrow twitches again. "The precinct has been very...quiet, since Peralta has died. We are in need of new blood."

Amy is soothed by the deep timbre of his voice; it's impossible not to be. "I'll do my best to do him justice, Captain," is all she says, not sure how to approach the grief Holt must feel for this man that she never met, and that seems to be good enough.

Holt dismisses her with the instruction to get herself some stationary from the closet in the evidence room - Amy brought her own, obviously, but she wants to look around anyway. As she walks through the bullpen again, there isn't as much attention fixed on her, and the Sargent even gives her a smile; it makes her perk up a little and stop dragging her feet like she's walking to the gallows.

The evidence room smells of a detergent so strong it makes Amy's eyes water. She makes her way to the closet at the back through the rows of boxes dating all the way back to the 80s, and starts to fiddle with the inane child lock, cursing at it, because all she wants is some goddamn biros - when suddenly it pops open at the same time the hairs on the back of her neck stand to attention. 

Amy spins on an instinct she doesn't understand and she sees a man not five feet away from her with an NYPD badge around his neck and a flannel buttoned up to his throat. He startles her, and she's sure he can tell that by the jerky motion of her hand as she offers it for him to shake - but she sees his eyes go comically wide like she's the one who snuck up on him.

"I'm Amy Santiago nice to meet you," she blurts out in a rush, and the man blinks; he looks at her outstretched hand with an expression she can't place, and then back at her face with the faintest smile.

"Jake," he replies, "Jake, but I, uh, I can't shake - I've got ink on my hands, sorry, I -"

Amy flushes and drops her arm. "No, no, don't worry about it -"

The faint smile has evolved into one of almost amazement - Jake looks like he's stumbled into the Cave of Wonders. "Well, welcome to the 99. Best precinct in probably the world." His voice is a little hoarse, but every syllable rises in the air between them like a laugh; the pride is endearing and almost childike, and Amy's blush deepens. "Nice to meet you too, Amy."

They stand there for a moment until Amy remembers that she still needs to actually get a desk. She grabs a handful of pens and says, almost stuttering with awkwardness, "I - have to go back to the bullpen. But it was nice to meet you, Jake." _You already said that!_

"Oh yeah, of course." Jake looks a little vulnerable now, but his eyes are sparkling. "I'll be here if you want me." There's some bitterness to the words, but it's so slight that Amy can believe she's imagined it, so she just shoots him another smile and slips past him.

_I wonder if our desks will be close?_ wonders the traitorous fanciful section of her brain, and Amy shuts it down immediately. She can't get a crush on the first coworker she meets, or on any coworker for that matter.

_Not today, Satan,_ she tells herself grimly, and leaves the room with Jake's eyes burning into her back.


	2. Chapter 2

Amy spends the rest of her first day at the 99 meeting the squad in between mountains of paperwork being piled on her desk, which is thankfully not the dead detective's - however, it's just across from it, and Amy finds herself staring at the empty space periodically. The other detectives are welcoming enough now that the shock of her arrival has died down; one of them, Rosa, is still curt with her, but Boyle explains that she's always like that as he cheerfully offers her some of the strange concoction that had destroyed the microwave. 

Amy doesn't have time to go back into the evidence lockup to speak to Jake again. Since there aren't any open cases to be assigned to her yet, hundreds of files to be digitized have been delegated to her. As much as she loves paperwork - and it's a lot - by the time five o'clock comes around, her eyes are itchy and her fingers are sore. Holt doesn't _say_ he's impressed with how many she got done, but Amy figures he is, and it makes her preen. 

She's in bed that night when she gets a friend request from one of her new coworkers on Facebook - Terry, the gigantic Sargent who had offered to be her gym buddy; Amy doesn't think she'd be taking him up on that. She accepts the request and indulges in a scroll through his profile. She's got to _know_ her superiors in order to be able to impress them, right? 

She brushes past a few photos of adorable kids and then comes across a post of a far more sober nature; the caption begins with 'Yesterday we lost part of the 99 family...' and instantly Amy freezes, faltering. This must be about the detective she was brought in to replace. With trepidation, she keeps reading as Terry describes the poor man as caring, as talented and hard-working, as kind-hearted and loyal, and she gets a lump in her throat. It isn't fair that someone had to die for her to get her dream job, she thinks, and guilt that Amy had thought she'd repressed wells up. 

She scrolls down to see the photo, and in an instant her numb hands drop the phone. 

The man in the photo is smiling broadly at the camera, his eyes crinkled up and glowing; he has one hand on Terry's arm and the other is reaching out for the camera, as if trying to bat it away, and it's clear why - there is CAUTION tape tangled around his neck like he got trapped in it. In the background, even Rosa is smiling fondly. 

He's gorgeous. He looks so alive. He is Jake. 

Amy is aware of a low keen coming from her throat, but she can't move. It's not possible. It's not possible that she met _this_ man today. She scrolls through more photos that Terry put up - including one of the man in full dress uniform wherein his serious eyes seem to go straight into her - but there's no denying that he's the man she met. No sicko playing dress up as a dead cop to prank her could have looked so similiar. 

But she can't have. There are two options; Amy spoke to the dead, or Amy is going crazy, and she guesses it must be the second option because the first option would lead to the second option anyway. But how would she have imagined it when she had never even seen a photo of Jake Peralta before?

Amy forces herself to sit up and flicks the light on. She shuts her eyes and tries to slow her heart rate with sheer determination; when this doesn't work, she does a few rounds of breathing excersies, and when she doesn't feel like her chest is going to explode, she looks at the photo again.

_Maybe he's been alive the whole time and hiding in the vents of the evidence lockup,_ Amy thinks mildly, and a slightly hysterical giggle chokes her.

Needless to say, Amy gets no sleep that night. She tries for a minute, hoping that when she wakes up it'll all have been a dream, but when that doesn't work she starts Googling the signs of hallucinations. That leads her to a series of terrifying Wikipedia pages and by the time the sun comes up, Amy has pretty much convinced herself that she somehow imagined the whole thing and is therefore going completely insane. She considers taking the day off to go to the doctor - though what she'd say when she got there, she has no idea - but she can't miss her second ever day at the 99, so she drags herself in.

Amy tries to act as normal as she can around the other detectives. She manages to last until just after lunch - Charles drags her to this weird Nepalese place - when she realises she's going to have to go into the evidence lockup to doublecheck the code assigned to an old murder case, and a small sound escapes her throat; Terry shoots her an odd look.

_There's nothing there,_ Amy tells herself firmly, trying to pretend her hands aren't shaking as she turns the door handle, _there is absolutely no one in this room. You're going to go in, get the number, and go out, and you won't see anything._

"Hey, Amy!"

"NO!" she screams, spinning around and pointing an accusing finger at Jake - who is standing earnest and friendly in the middle of two rows of boxes, still in his buttoned flannel. "No, you aren't real, no -"

Jake's face falls. "Shit, Amy -"

Amy shuts her eyes tight. "I'm not listening. You're a hallucination." She reached out blindly, fumbling along the boxes. "I'm getting the code and leaving. I never saw you."

"Amy, please." Her imagination sounds distraught now, and it sparks a wave of pity in her before she remembers it's not real. "I didn't know you'd find out so soon - I should have - I'm real, I swear to God -"

Amy laughs derisively. "Isn't that exactly what you'd say if you weren't real?"

There's a pause, and then Jake snorts - it's such an odd sound that Amy almost smiles automatically. "Fair," the hallucination mutters, "but please just open your eyes, Amy."

She does, reluctantly and there he is - looking sad and lost and very, very real. Amy stays back, wary, and Jake gives her a pain-filled smile.

"I'm real," he says softly. "I should have told you I was -" He swallows audibly; he seems to be agonised, and Amy's heart seizes. "- dead, but you - no one can ever see me and you did and I just didn't want you to be scared cause I wanted to talk to someone, anyone, and -"

Amy is suddenly cold. "You're dead," she says, and saying it out loud is like plunging into ice water. 

Jake Peralta's face hardens with sorrow. "Yeah," he replies hoarsely, and Amy - left with no other option in her shell-shocked mind - flees.


	3. Chapter 3

She dreams of him that night. 

Amy had gone through the rest of the work day in a daze; she'd stubbornly avoided both the evidence locker and talking to anyone else in the precinct. She'd been worried that she'd blurt out that she'd met a ghost, and then they'd think she was crazy, which she _was_, and then she'd lose her job and then she'd end up in an asylum because _wow_ , she's talking to dead people, huh, and then - 

She dreams of him, anyway, dreams that she walks in on her first day at the 99 and Jake is sitting at his desk, alive, and he smiles broadly at her and shakes her hand and she feels her chest flutter. When Amy wakes up at five a.m, her lungs are in her throat; for a split second, she smells coffee and male cologne and her breath stops. 

Her mad internet research starts not ten minutes later. Amy feels stupid typing in 'imagining ghosts' and then, when that fails to yield any useful results, 'seeing dead people' - that leads her to a million Bruce Willis memes and she gives in. Sure, there are plenty of forums with people raving about ghosts and hauntings, and even more articles about evidence and lack of evidence and everything in between, but she can't find what she's looking for.

_What am I looking for?_ she wonders, but she doesn't know and she doesn't know if she even wants to find it.

It seems like the only thing to do, as much as she's dreading it, is to try to speak to Jake again. Amy goes to work early and arrives in between the night shift leaving and the day shift beginning; there's only a skeleton crew of janitors and uniforms, and one drunk man in the holding cell, clutching his head. No one so much as looks at Amy as she slips past them, and no one sees how much her hands are shaking as she turns the handle.

Jake is there, like he's been waiting for her, standing in the middle of the room with a tight jaw. Amy swallows hard when she sees him and shuts the door firmly behind her, leaning against it and keeping her distance from the - the spectre.

"What is this." she says flatly, after a beat of silence, and Jake grimaces.

"Okay," he says slowly, sliding his hands sheepishly into his jean pockets, "okay, so, I should have told you that - that I'm -" His mouth works over the word _dead_ like he can't get it out, and Amy feels a surge of odd pity. " - that I'm not what - you thought. And I'm sorry that I freaked you out. And I -"

"You died six weeks ago." Amy's chest is tight as she cuts him off. "I don't understand."

Jake laughs, a little bitterly. "Neither do I." His hands curl into fists in his pockets. "I mean, I don't know how I'm still here, and I don't know why no one but you can see me."

Amy has half a mind to reach for her gun, as ridiculous as it sounds, because someone has never been so obviously a threat to her in her whole career. It's not that she thinks Jake would hurt her - can he, even? - but he theatens everything she knows, everything she's believed her whole life, and she doesn't know what to do about that.

But then light is starting to rise through the window, and Jake glows at the edges with it like something that is not quite human. He looks at her in a way that makes it very hard for her to think of him as a threat - Bambi-eyed, her mom just to call men like than on TV, and Amy feels nostalgia rise in her throat till it hurts.

He looks so alone in the middle of the room by himself, she thinks, when he says delicately, "I'd like to see you again." Now his face is guilty. "But if you're - scared - I can leave you alone. I promise."

Scared. Yes, she's certainly scared. But not so much of Jake as of what Jake _is_. She could tell him to leave her alone and Amy believes that he honestly would, and things could be normal again.

But it isn't Jake's fault. She doesn't know whose it is - hell, she doesn't even know how he died - but it doesn't feel right to leave Jake by himself, dead in his prime. It isn't fair. Nothing about this is.

"You don't have to leave me alone," she hears herself say, distant, dream-like, "I don't want you to be alone."

Jake closes his eyes for a brief second; his relief is palpable. "Thank God," he groans, "thank you, thank you, I'm so _bored_, Amy!"

She can't help but laugh, half at the absurdity of it all. "I've been told I'm pretty boring."

He appraises her mock-critically; the intensity of his eyes is electrifying. "I don't believe that for a second." 

"We'll see."

"Yeah. " Jake seems like he's never going to look away. "We will."


End file.
